Baris Yarkadas, the editor of the online newspaper Gercek Gündem (Real Agenda), is facing up to five years in prison at a trial that started on 3 March 2010.

Proceedings were initiated in response to a complaint brought by the president's office. He is charged with insulting President Abdullah Gül under article 299-2 of the criminal code for failing to remove a comment posted by a reader.

We call for the immediate withdrawal of this baseless charge, Reporters Without Borders said. It is incomprehensible that Yarkadas should be accused of insulting the president when he did not himself write the comment, which was anyway neither rude nor insulting. This prosecution is indicative of a desire by the government to intimidate and silence its critics.

The reader accused President Gül of allowing his Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sargsyan, to defy him. Bravo, you have trampled on the honour of the great republic of Turkey, he wrote.

Yarkadas is facing other prosecutions. He is charged with offending Nur Birgen, head of the Institute for Forensic Medicine's expertise section, by reporting allegations that human rights NGOs have made against her.

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Yemeni authorities' seizure of equipment enabling the pan-Arab satellite news channels Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera to broadcast live from the country.

The move came after both channels had broadcast clashes between police and protesters in the southern town of Daleh, as well as rallies in the north against the crackdown. The stations can still report and transmit taped coverage.

We condemn this arbitrary seizure and ask the authorities to allow Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya to resume their live broadcasts without delay, said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Mohamed Abdel Dayem. To suddenly assert that the confiscations are due to lack of authorization is not credible given than both channels have been broadcasting from Yemen for years without such a claim by authorities.

Al-Arabiya's bureau chief in Sana'a, Mahmud Munassar, told CPJ that his employees were briefly detained and questioned. He called the raid an intimidation tactic designed to silence the channel's coverage of Yemen. Al-Arabiya received the green light from the president of the republic in 2009 to bring live broadcasting equipment into Yemen, Munassar told CPJ. The Sana'a government is clearly trying to cover up its policies in the south.

The Middle East must open up its markets to foreigners and renounce media censorship if it wants to harness a powerful wind of creative energy blowing through the region, Rupert Murdoch said.

Speaking at the inaugural Abu Dhabi Media Summit, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, parent company of The Times, said that the world did not think of the Middle East when it thinks of creative content. Even Arab citizens, he said, preferred to watch Hollywood movies or American television.

 Murdoch warned his hosts not to use censorship to bury inconvenient stories. Throughout my life, Murdoch said, I have endured my share of blistering newspaper attacks, unflattering television coverage and books that grossly distort my views or my business or both. Countries that buried bad press ended up promoting the very panic and distrust that they had hoped to control. In the long run, this is counterproductive.

A British artist has accused Turkey of censorship after an Istanbul court fined him almost $4,500  for caricaturing the country's prime minister.

Artist Michael Dickinson displayed in 2006 an illustration that superimposed the head of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan onto the body of a dog.

The court suspended the fine, on the condition that Dickinson does not produce similar art for the next five years.

It's censorship. It's a threat. It's punishing people who are expressing their opinion, Dickinson told dpa, the day after the verdict was handed down. There is a lack of freedom in a country where journalists can be arrested or cartoonists fined for expressing their opinion, said the artist, who has been living in Turkey for the last 23 years.

Dickinson's illustration was first shown as part of an Istanbul anti-war exhibition. The artist was later arrested and charged with insulting the Turkish prime minister. A local court initially acquitted Dickinson in 2008, but a state prosecutor asked that the case be reopened.

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a Kuwaiti court's decision to fine a journalist and two newspapers for statements deemed offensive to the ruling family and the prime minister.

A criminal court in Kuwait fined opposition writer and journalist Mohammed Abdulqader al-Jassem 3,000 Kuwaiti dinars (US$10,500) for publishing an article in November critical of Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammed al-Ahmad al-Sabah, who is also a member of the ruling family. The article alleged that media outlets backed by the prime minister had been stoking tensions between the country's Sunni and Shiite communities. The independent daily Alam Al-Youm, which published the article, was also fined the same amount.

We urge the Kuwaiti judiciary to overturn these sentences, said CPJ's Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Mohamed Abdel Dayem. The press should be able to freely criticize government officials even if they are members of the ruling family. It is outrageous that criticizing public officials is a crime in Kuwait.

The Egyptian Journalists' Syndicate's misleadingly named freedoms committee announced its full support for Al-Masry Al-Youm's columnist, Sahar El-Ga'ara, in her call for shutting down and prosecuting the authors of blogs that she said preach atheism and disrespect religions.

El-Ga'ara wrote a column titled Complaint to the Prosecutor General, in Al-Masry Al-Youm, condemning three specific blogs: Do the rules and regulations of publishing apply to the internet? I don't think so. Therefore, the internet is turning into a lethal weapon in the hands of organizations with fanatical ideologies and homosexuals.

Mohamed Abdel Qudous, head of the 'freedoms' committee, told Daily News Egypt, We are supporting Sahar El-Ga'ara for two main reasons. First, because we reject atheism, if a person wants to be an atheist he can be but he can't preach it. The second reason is because of the foul language and insults directed at her on the internet.

Freedom of expression has its limits; a person cannot preach atheism or insult the three divine religions. This is not accepted anywhere in the world, claimed Abdel Qudous.

A new report has now revealed that Microsoft censors its Bing search engine returns in Arab countries even more heavily than the countries themselves do using national Internet filters.

The study covered the United Arab Emirates, Syria, Algeria, and Jordan, and found heavy censorship of anything relating to sex.

It is interesting that Microsoft's implementation of this type of wholesale social content censorship for the entire Arabian countries region is in fact not being practiced by many of the Arab government censors themselves, reads a new report from the Open Net Initiative (ONI). It adds: It is unclear, however, whether Bing's keyword filtering in the Arab countries is an initiative from Microsoft, or whether any or all of the Arab states have asked Microsoft to comply with local censorship practices or laws.

ONI performed the study by testing the search terms inside the countries. Banned words include sex, intercourse, breast, nude, and many more in both the English and Arabic language.

When someone attempts to search most sex-related terms, Bing informs searchers: Your country or region requires a strict Bing SafeSearch setting, which filters out results that might contain adult content.

Golshifteh Farahani knows how dangerous it is now to be an artist in Tehran. In 2008 she became the first Iranian-based actress in almost 30 years to appear in a Hollywood blockbuster. Starring opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott's Body of Lies, she hoped the film would be appreciated in her homeland for its critical stance on America's politics in the Middle East.

She was wrong. When she returned to Tehran the then 24-year-old was subjected to seven months of inquisition from the authorities of the Islamic republic. Reprimanded for not having asked the permission of the government, she became a regular guest of the Information Ministry and intelligence services.

...Read full article

Artists from around the world have called for the release of the Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi, who was arrested in a raid on his home in Tehran. The award-winning director, a vocal supporter of the Opposition, was seized on Monday night along with his wife and daughter and 15 house guests.

It is a very shocking development and further demonstration of the intolerance of the regime, said Ken Loach, the British director. I hope all people working in films will call for his release, and speak out in solidarity for him and all Iranian film-makers working under similar conditions. It is completely unacceptable.

Panahi had supported Mir Hossein Mousavi, the opposition leader, in last year's disputed parliamentary elections. He was previously arrested in July at a ceremony commemorating Neda Soltan, the anti-Government protester who was killed by security forces Last month, Panahi was denied permission to leave Iran to attend the Berlin Film Festival.

Panahi's work has received critical acclaim for its unflinching portrayal of social tensions in contemporary Iran. In 2000, he won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival for The Circle, which depicted women struggling with the country's inherent sexism. His most recent feature, Offside, depicted a group of women defying a ban on them attending football matches, and attempting to enter the national stadium disguised as men to watch a crucial World Cup qualifier. The film won the 2006 Silver Bear award in Berlin.

Despite his international success, the critical stance in most of Panahi's work has led to conflict with government censors. Most of his films are banned from being shown in Iranian cinemas.

Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court has turned down an appeal submitted by the government and the Ministry of Defense against the release of a movie about former President Gamal Abdel Nasser and his deputy Abdel Hakim Amer.

The court said it upholds the freedom of opinion, expression and artistic creativity, which are supported by the Egyptian Constitution.

Mamdouh el-Leithy, who wrote the screenplay for el-Raees wal Mousheer (The President and the Marshal), filed a lawsuit in 2006 after authorities ordered that filming should stop. According to el-Leithy, these authorities said the script would reveal secrets regarding Nasser and Amer's relationship and had to be changed before production could continue.

The court ruled that only the Government Censorship Authority has authority to determine which movies are appropriate for screening. The court's ruling also stated that the Government Censorship Authority should not abandon its jurisdiction in deference to another state institution.

Nasser Amin, head of the Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession, who also acts as lawyer for el-Leithy, described the ruling as historic because it entrenches the principles of freedom of opinion and expression.

The authorities in Iran have closed down the country's biggest-circulation reformist newspaper, Etemaad, accusing it of supposedly breaching media laws.

Observers say that the paper had just published a story on the reaction to the emergence of a film showing the police attack on Tehran university last June.

Authorities also suspended publication of a weekly reformist paper whose managing director is the son of one of Iran's opposition leaders, Mehdi Karroubi. Last week Mehdi Karroubi was beaten up by Iranian security forces at a rally.

Hossein Karroubi told the BBC that the paper, Iran Dokht, was targeted due to his father's political activities. He said that a few days ago, an Iranian government official had spoken to his mother, the proprietor of Iran Dokht. The official had criticised the political stance of the opposition leader.

A third publication, Sina, a weekly provincial newspaper, was also banned, accused of not operating in line with the constitution.

Egypt came under review Wednesday, Feb 17, 2010, for the first time at the United Nations Human Rights Council for its rights record.

Western countries criticized the emergency laws in effect since 1981, along with related restrictions on freedom of press, expression and unions and the imprisoning of journalists and bloggers.

The accusations included the death penalty, torture and illegal detentions and the use of violence against religious minorities.

Human Rights Watch had called on Egypt to

• epeal the emergency laws
• lift its longstanding abusive emergency regulations
• hold security forces accountable for serious human rights abuses such as arbitrary arrest and incommunicado detention
• end systematic torture and unfair trials before state security courts
• halt its systematic arrest and harassment of peaceful political activists, as well as bloggers and journalists
• halt the policy of using lethal force to stop African migrants and asylum seekers from crossing the Sinai border into Israel

The government has never confirmed the number of those arbitrarily detained under emergency law orders issued by the interior minister, but Egyptian human rights organizations estimate that between 5,000 and 10,000 people are held without charge.

Security officers arrested a group of bloggers and political activists who had traveled to the southern town of Nag Hammadi to pay their condolences to the families of 6 Christians shot and killed on Coptic Christmas Eve.

Despite rave reviews that critics have been showering on the PlayStation 3's latest game to hit the market, Heavy Rain will not see any shelf life in the UAE.

The videogame's nationwide launch was aborted after the UAE's censor, the National Media Council, reportedly pulled the plug on the sales and promotion of the title, which has attracted global controversy for its depiction of nudity and violence. This decision, despite Heavy Rain's 18+PEGI rating, signals the government's intent on cracking down on games that are deemed unfit for the audience because of their content.

A sequence where one of the main characters is forced to go topless at gun point and perform a seductive dance at a club, were among the more 'objectionable' aspects that probably led to the banning of the game. Heavy Rain has been described by its publisher's Quantic Dream as psychological thriller, with four professionals on the trail of the Origami Killer, who preys on boys between eight and 13 and then subsequently drowns them in rainwater.

Bahrain was urged to take a softer approach to Internet censorship by United Nations Development Programme Arab Knowledge Report director Dr Ghaith Fariz.

The government's alleged policy of blocking politically-motivated websites and newspapers could be cutting the bad with the good, said Dr Fariz.

Dr Fariz claimed that although blacklisting pornographic content could be justified from a moral standpoint, there was a fine line when censoring other subjects.

We are advocates of total freedom [...BUT... not for porn]. In many cases, websites may be blocked for good or bad reasons - we are not here to judge. Unfortunately, what tends to be happening more frequently is that in the name of combating the evil we seem to be killing a lot of the good. We have called, and we still call, for people to understand that the veering principles of blocking specific sites can be abused and has been abused - intentionally or unintentionally.

Dr Fariz was speaking at a Press conference at the United Nations headquarters in Hoora. He was outlining the findings of the Arab Knowledge Report 2009, the first in an annual series to be published in association with the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation.

A display by a Spanish artist, including a candelabrum growing out of the barrel of an Uzi sub-machinegun and a sculpture of a haredi figure standing on a priest, who kneels on a prostrate Muslim, has drawn fire from the Foreign Ministry.

The Israeli Embassy in Madrid issued a statement protesting the display at the International Art Fair in the Spanish capital.

Values such as freedom of speech and creative freedom are sometimes used to disguise stereotyping, prejudice and provocation for the sake of provocation, the statement said. The sculptures are two of five works on display by the well-known artist Eugenio Merino.

Merino denied that he had tried to provoke. The aim was to display the wonder in the co-existence of the three religions, each making a common effort to reach God, he told reporters.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) convicted Turkey of a violation of freedom of expression in the context of the book The Eleven Thousand Rods (Les onze mille verges) by French writer Guillaume Apollinaire published in 1907. The book was censored in Turkey and its publisher, Hades Publishing owner Rahmi Akdas,, was convicted by a Turkish court.

The decision was announced by the ECHR on 16 February. The court declared that there nothing to say against the protection of moral values. Nevertheless, Acknowledgment of the cultural, historical and religious particularities of the Council of Europe's member States could not go so far as to prevent public access in a particular language, in this instance Turkish, to a work belonging to the European literary heritage.

Publisher Akdas was sentenced to a monetary fine of 684 Turkish Lira (TL) on the grounds of obscenity and harming inner feelings of the people by publishing the work which contains graphic descriptions of scenes of sexual intercourse, even though it is a fictional work. On 11 March 2004, the Court of Appeals approved the decision and decreed for the seizure and destruction of all copies of the book.